The present invention relates to a personal communication system. Here, "personal communication" indicates such a telephone communication that a personal telecommunication number allocated to each person is used (without use of a telephone number allocated to each telephone set) to enable personal communications, no matter where the personal user himself may be.
In the personal communication, the call processing is effected on the basis of a personal telecommunication number (PTN) previously determined for each personal user. One of the major features of this personal communication is to enable telephone communications personally. In more detail, the call information transmitted and received between personal communication terminal units and a network includes PTNs for calling each person. When such a personal call as described above is incoming to the personal terminal unit, the personal terminal unit operates to answer the incoming personal call only when a person designated by the incoming PTN inputs his own personal identity (PID) to the personal terminal unit. In other words, it is possible to realize the personal communication such that only the called person designated by the PTN can communicate with the calling person, without allowing other persons to communicate with the calling person.
In the prior art personal communication system, however, there exits some problems in that the personal terminal unit to which a personal call is incoming is kept ringing, when the designated called person is absent as long as the calling person does not stop the personal call of his own free will. In addition, there exists some cases where the calling person wants to communicate with another person as a proxy.